The Western Ghats of India, running parallel to the West
Coast of India, is one of the 34 biodiversity hotspots of the
world (Myers et al., 2000) with amazing diversity and
endemism of flora and fauna especially of vertebrates.
However, diversity and endemism of invertebrates have not
been studied except for certain charismatic taxa. This is
particularly true for land snails of India, in general and in the
Western Ghats in particular. The Indian land snail fauna is
very diverse and to date 1,129 species have been reported
from the country (Ramakrishna & Dey, 2010). There may be
many more undescribed species, especially in the three
biodiversity hotspots - the Western Ghats, part of the
Himalayas and part of the Indo-Burma hotspot (which
includes north-eastern Indian states). The Western Ghats
biodiversity hotspot has 270 species representing 24 families
and 58 genera (Aravind, 2005; Aravind et al., 2005) with
76 % endemicity. The ecology of many land snail species of
the Western Ghats is still poorly known. Among many cryptic
and interesting snail species is Corilla anax (Corillidae). The
genus Corilla is represented by only one species in the
Western Ghats (Fig. 1) and ten from Sri Lanka. The Natural
History Museum, London, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural
Sciences, Brussels and ATREE, Bangalore, are collaborating
in an effort to understand the evolutionary relationships
between corillids from the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka.